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14 March 2006

Law School Rankings and More from the Law & Society Review

The latest issue of the Law & Society Review (Vol. 40, No. 1) has some interesting articles:Do Rankings Matter? The Effects of U.S. News & World
Report Rankings on the Admissions Process of Law Schools by

Michael Sauder & Ryon Lancaster

"Using data for U.S. law schools from 1996 to 2003,
we find that schools' rankings have significant effects on both the decisions
of prospective students and the decisions schools make in the admissions
process. In addition, we present evidence that the rankings can become a
self-fulfilling prophecy for some schools, as the effects of rank described
above alter the profile of their student bodies, affecting their future rank.
Cumulatively, these findings suggest that the rankings help create rather than
simply reflect differences among law schools through the magnification of the
small, and statistically random, distinctions produced by the measurement
apparatus."

The Influence of Jurisprudential Considerations on Supreme
Court Decisionmaking: A Study of Conflict Cases by Stefanie A. Lindquist & David E. Klein

"Our analyses reveal that the justices are (1) more likely to
follow the reasoning process adopted by the majority of circuits involved in
the conflict, (2) less likely to adopt the conflict position marred by contrary
dissents and concurrences in the circuit court opinions, and (3) more likely to
adopt the conflict position endorsed by prestigious circuit court judges. Our
findings suggest that jurisprudential considerations, as well as attitudinal
concerns, affect the justices' decisionmaking processes in a substantial
minority of cases."

"One of the central controversies in the judicial behavior
literature is the extent to which judges' ability to act according to their
ideological preferences is affected by their location in the judicial
hierarchy. Judges on intermediate appellate courts have different
decisionmaking environments than high court judges. As a result, the goals of
lower appellate court judges may differ from those of their superiors: the
quest for legal accuracy may compete with the desire to pursue policy
preferences."